In the first few weeks of the new year, we have been contracted to design a number of reports. The Coming Clean Collaborative has asked us to produce “Baby’s Toxic Bottle: Bisphenol A Leaching from Popular Baby Bottles.” We’ll be working with The Lincoln Institute of Land Policy on “Transforming the Practice of Community Development with Land Information Systems.” And the Union of Concerned Scientists has asked us to work on two upcoming reports for their Scientific Integrity program. We recently completed several other reports as well: a chemicals policy report for the Lowell Center for Sustainable Production at UMass Lowell, a biofuels report for the Union of Concerned Scientists, and a chemicals policy report for Governor Balducci’s office in Maine. We’ve gotten pretty good at creating effective reports in a timely and cost-effective manner. Most important, they are clear and crisp, making it easier for readers to access and absorb the sometimes dense information at hand.
We’ve also been called on to produce a number of fact sheets recently. During the past year, we developed a series for Clean Production Action. The Alliance for a Healthy Tomorrow hired us to design a folder containing 10 fact sheets. And we continue to produce numerous fact sheets yearly for the Union of Concerned Scientists’ Climate Change program. More and more, our clients find this concise form to be a useful tool when attempting to influence policymakers, the press, and the public at large. In many cases, these are never printed — they are made available digitally to be downloaded and printed by the user. This makes them a very inexpensive way to get the message out. Given that printing doesn’t factor into the timing of a project, the production cycle can be very short, often allowing a piece to be available online within days of our receipt of a manuscript. Many clients have found this strategy advantageous due to the ease and immediacy of updating online digital downloads.
For those of you who have not had the good fortune of visiting our world headquarters, let me describe our work environment a bit. Aside from three digital workstations, most of our space is devoted to flat surfaces with job folders fanned out in rows. To each folder is attached a job “ticket” that contains information about the job (and you), where we record the time we devote to various aspects of the work. Each day, based on a number of priorities, I set the folders out in order — one row for me and one for Amanda. There are six other rows of job tickets in different stages of production, awaiting feedback from all of you. As the day progresses, folders move from the “in box” to the “jobs in waiting” area as we provide you with PDF proofs for review. Folders move from my pile to Amanda’s and back as the day goes on and deadlines draw near. (To give you a sense of volume, today there are 67 jobs in various stages of production.) At the same time, we are constantly (and I mean constantly) backing up our digital files onto multiple hard drives, using an archiving system that guarantees we are always working on the most recent version of a file. The system works, allowing us the freedom to devote the bulk of our time to working with and for you.
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David Gerratt / DG Communications
email • web www.NonprofitDesign.com
phone 978.635.9664 • cell 617.823.2313 • fax 978.635.5499
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